Wednesday, November 04, 2020

Winner

We are in for a lot of argument.  I would like to go on record that I want the winner to win.  I hope that is Trump, but I want more for it to be the correct count. How will we know?  We won't, exactly, but we can at least hope to have some sense of it. 

A side point.  I am seeing the discussion at this point as Republicans saying "it looks like there may be some fraud, we have to check this out," while the Democrats are saying "you are falsely accusing with no basis."  Is the reverse of this happening anywhere?  Are there (specific) accusations that Republicans have put in fraudulent votes that Democrats are challenging as invalid? I figure there must be, somewhere.  Anyone know?

And no, voter suppression and intimidation don't count in that category.

9 comments:

  1. Statistically impossible. The story itself may be bogus, but keep following it.

    An accomplished fraudster would have settled on a 90-10 split to reduce suspicion.

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  2. This article has more details

    https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/04/yes-democrats-are-trying-to-steal-the-election-in-michigan-wisconsin-and-pennsylvania/

    It's a bit hard to follow since it's not written as a straight factual accounting but it appears to me from a quick read that the jump was the result of a typo or error in *reporting the count to news organizations* and not an actual jump in the number of ballots officially counted.

    It turns out, the vote dump was the result of an alleged typo, an extra zero that had been tacked onto Biden’s vote total in Shiawassee County, Michigan. It seems the error was discovered only because Davis and other Twitter users noted how insane and suspicious the vote totals looked, and demanded an investigation that uncovered what was either a typo or an incredibly clumsy attempt to boost Biden’s vote count.

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  3. "It turns out, the vote dump was the result of an alleged typo, an extra zero that had been tacked onto Biden’s vote total in Shiawassee County, Michigan."

    Don't the vote totals have to be signed and certified by someone...under penalty of perjury...before they become official?

    We need to avoid conflation of early estimates made for news-reporting purposes with actual, legally-definitive results.

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  4. Apparently 100% is the way to go.

    https://twitter.com/fivethirtyeight/status/1324093784452403202?s=21

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  5. Not sure, but I was weirded out that robocalls informing me Democrats were committing election fraud actually started coming to my house 3 weeks ago. Particularly weird since I live in Massachusetts, where the election is a foregone conclusion.

    Apparently we had a fringe guy running in the Republican primary for Senate to challenge for Ed Markey's seat, and he is on a scorched earth campaign to accuse the Democrats (and maybe MA Republicans? Not clear) of election fraud that threw the election for his competitor because they were scared of him.

    This is interesting because:
    1. Our primary was in March, and he didn't start making these accusations until September 24th. We started getting robocalls in mid-October.
    2. The guy who won the Republican nomination actually did pretty decently for a Republican running against a relatively popular Dem incumbent in a blue state (33%).
    3. The MA election commission has clarified he can look at ballots whenever he wants, as long as he gets a court order. It seems obvious when you think about it, but they can't just release boxes of ballots to random people who ask for them. Apparently he is making these accusations without actually challenging the election officially.

    Total mess:
    https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-election-ballot-massachuset/fact-check-massachusetts-election-officials-have-not-destroyed-ballots-or-committed-election-fraud-idUSKBN26N2AF

    https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/09/06/howie-carr-good-thing-shiva-isnt-taking-his-gop-primary-loss-personally/

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  6. Yes, i’ve seen a number of complaints of voter fraud from Democrats as well. Most of those are factual absurdities around mail-in ballots being disqualified.

    The Decision Desk HQ guys are getting blamed on some of those vote total items, but their stance is that they never change totals sent to them from election officials, but they will question and ask them to review. Which is slightly frustrating to read, but I definitely understand why they wouldn’t: once you start down the road of “fixing things” it’s a very slippery slope.

    Andy McCarthy has a good piece on NRO about the importance of getting it right, but also focusing on whether a potential issue impacts the election or not. Very solid advice for those of us with little patience.

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  7. Also, two conservative/libertarians I follow on Twitter have made the “incompetence vs evil” solid point: https://twitter.com/neontaster/status/1324355746109280258?s=21

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  8. I didn't vote. My daughter texted me early Tuesday that the lines were long but because of age/disability, I could go to the front. It wasn't that line that was the problem -- it was the line waiting for a parking place! After 30 minutes I gave up and felt fortunate to find my way out of the parking lot. I'd feel guilty if my state hadn't gone 60+ % for Trump. Though I haven't checked, I would bet on my precinct being for Trump at a much higher percentage for Trump.

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